Stray

“Leave her alone before you scare her off again,” Owen drawled. “You know how sensitive women can be about their clothes.” He put his arm around my waist and squeezed me affectionately, a gesture as smooth and gentle as his temperament.

“She’s no woman, she’s our sister,” Ethan said. I twisted in Owen’s embrace to stick my tongue out at him. Ethan reciprocated and moved to sit on the edge of my bed, feet brushing the thick taupe carpet.

“She’s not my sister,” Jace said around a mouthful of half-chewed apple. His easy grin spoke of casual teasing, but his eyes met mine with enough heat to make me pause with uncertainty for a moment before replying.

I smiled to soften the coming blow. “I’m not your anything.”

“Ouch!” He leaned back against the desk with one hand over his heart, covering an imaginary wound. Then his smile reached his eyes, and he took another bite of the apple. Clearly I’d dealt him a fatal blow.

Owen hugged me one more time, brushing the top of my head with his chin full of prickly stubble, then let me go, backing up to lean against my wall. On the radio, the first notes of “Miss Independent” played, and I smiled at the irony of listening to it from inside my tumbleweed prison. Lucky bitch, I thought, turning it up to give my father every opportunity to hear the song through the walls.

I sank onto the bed next to Ethan and leaned my head against his bare shoulder. “What’s this about you fighting a stray at school?” he asked, draping one arm around my waist. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s not ladylike to pick on boys?”

Had she ever. “It was nothing. Just a scuffle.”

Jace tossed the apple into the air and caught it behind his back. “Marc thinks it was the same guy who took Sara.”

Like he’d know, I thought. But what I said was, “Couldn’t have been. He was too easily frightened. It was just some asshole intruder looking for a little excitement.”

“Sounds like he found it.” Owen drawled.

I grinned. “Damn right.”

“Looks like you found a little too,” Jace said, his gaze focused on my stomach.

Shrugging out from under Ethan’s arm, I looked down at the gap between the hem of my shirt and the waist of my jeans. An amorphous purple blob had taken shape on my left side, over the lowest of my ribs. “Beautiful,” I said, standing to get a better view in the mirror. “Just lovely.” It hadn’t looked anywhere near that bad when I’d left campus. Sammi hadn’t even noticed.

“Where’s everyone else?” I asked, tugging my shirt down to hide the bruise as I sank back onto the bed.

“Vic’s out looking for Sara,” Jace said. He tossed the apple core into my trash can and held both fists up in victory. I rolled my eyes. Guys may get bigger, but they never really grow up.

“Yeah, I heard.” I pulled away from Ethan, rolling my head on my shoulders, trying to ease the tension that had been building since the moment I’d smelled the stray on campus. It didn’t work, but it did give me a pretty good crick in my neck. “What about Parker?”

“He’s around,” Ethan said. “Marc has him out playing foot soldier.”

“On our own property?” My eyebrows arched in surprise as I rubbed my neck. Then the implication sank in, and my hand fell into my lap, my discomfort temporarily forgotten. “Daddy must be really spooked by all this.”

Ethan and Owen exchanged looks, but I wasn’t fast enough to interpret them before their expressions were gone. Something else was up, but they weren’t talking. Wonderful. I hate secrets I’m not in on.

“We better go,” Owen said, shooting Ethan a stern look. “We’re supposed to help Parker.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ethan mumbled, pulling himself off the bed with one hand wrapped around the corner post.

Owen slapped him on the shoulder and shoved him toward the door, turning back to look at me from the threshold. “We’re going huntin’ later, if you wanna come.”

“We’ll see,” I said, careful not to commit myself. I loved hunting, and he knew it. But if I appeared too eager to go, they might think I was glad to be home, and I certainly couldn’t have a dangerous rumor like that floating around unchecked.

Owen gave me a leisurely, knowing smile and disappeared into the hallway. I listened until I heard the back door slam shut, then turned to look at Jace.

He smiled back at me from my desk chair, showing no inclination to leave. Big surprise. I considered kicking him out so I could pout in private, but then he turned those bright blue eyes on me—the playful sparkle mingling seamlessly with a hint of that earlier heat—and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kick him out and watch the light fade from his eyes.

Instead, I returned his smile, running my hand over the bed to smooth out wrinkles I didn’t really mind in the first place.

Jace leaned back in my desk chair, his Kentucky Wildcats T-shirt stretched across broad shoulders. He was descended from the original Kentucky wildcat, which, of course, was more than just a mascot. “Don’t be mad at me,” he said. “None of this was my idea.”

“I know.” I tilted my head to the left, still trying to work out the muscle cramp. “You can stay. Until you start to bore me.”

“Why, thank you, Your Highness.” He stood to perform a deep, highly sarcastic bow. But instead of returning to the chair, he sat down behind me on the bed, brushing my hand away from my neck. Careful not to tug, he gathered my hair and laid it over my shoulder, then began massaging my neck at the base of my skull.

His touch was firm and warm, and his fingers moved with confidence, seeking the tensest muscles. I moaned with relief, then stiffened and flushed from embarrassment. Jace only laughed and rubbed harder until I relaxed again.

“So, how ya doin’, kid?” he asked, moving down to work on my shoulders.

“Not too bad, for a prisoner.”

He chuckled, sounding distinctly unsympathetic. “Could be worse.”

“How?”

“You could be a hostage.”

I huffed, plucking imaginary fuzz from my comforter as he moved lower, kneading the muscles between my shoulder blades through the thin cotton of my shirt. “At least a hostage has hope of a ransom.”

His hands hesitated for a moment, his breath stirring my hair as he sighed. “Your dad’s only trying to do what’s best.”

“For whom?” I pulled away, turning to half face him.

“For everyone.”

“What’s good for the gander isn’t always good for the goose, Jace,” I said, resorting to a mutilated cliché. It didn’t help. He couldn’t understand. Tomcats were immune to my particular plight, a fact I’d envied all of my adult life.

“You’re not poultry,” Jace said, grinning as he brushed a strand of hair from my shoulder. “And anyway, after everything that’s happened the last couple of days, you have to admit us watching out for you was a good idea.”

“The hell it was.” I beat Jace over the head with that stupid fancy pillow as I spoke, punctuating each word with another harmless blow, even when he brought his arms up in defense. “I…watched… out…for…my… self.” After one final whack, I dropped the pillow into my lap and sat frowning at Jace. “Marc wasn’t even there. But don’t you dare tell Daddy. I’m getting ready to try my hand at blackmail.”

“A new hobby? What, you get tired of the disappearing act?”

“Funny.” I smacked him one last time with the pillow. “But I’m not kidding. He has no right interfering in my life. For that matter, neither does my father.”

Jace’s grin faded slowly. “My father died when I was three, and my stepfather never gave me anything but a hard time. Your dad gave you five years of freedom. Why isn’t that enough?” With nothing appropriate left to rub, his hands settled aimlessly into his lap, and I stared at them to avoid seeing the dejected look in his eyes. He was taking it too personally. It wasn’t like I’d left him in particular.

“Because my life isn’t his to give,” I said, my words clipped short in frustration. “It’s mine, and I should be able to do whatever I want with it.” Whyis that so hard for everyone else to understand?

Jace shrugged. “So, what do you want to do with your life?”

My hand clenched around a handful of my comforter. “I don’t know yet.”

Instead of laughing, he nodded as if he understood. He probably did. If Jace had any long-term goals, surely he wouldn’t have still been working for my father.